Cuba's Growing Bioscience Industry

Wired has an interesting piece on the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry in Cuba.  Who knew that so much money was being poured into drug development there? As the article points out, it's not clear where Cuba got the money from and how much it's put into the industry.

Cuba had been creating generic knockoffs for a long time and selling them to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union fell, however:

Faced with economic calamity, Castro did something remarkable: He poured hundreds of millions of dollars into pharmaceuticals. No one knows how - Cuba's economy, with its secrecy and centralized structure, defies market analysis.

What I would love to know more about is the intellectual property situation there. Like most Communist regimes, my understanding is that all IPR are owned by the state, and that patents don't exist there. But, if Cuba wants to further develop this industry and sell in more countries, will it be forced to change its laws (as China is doing) to conform with other countries' laws?  Castro seems to be fundamentally against the idea of patents as a capitalist tool that drives down innovation (and there are plenty of scientists in non-Communist countries who would agree, to an extent), but will they need to revamp the government's thinking when, in the words of the director of the biggest lab there, "Even if you're giving medicine to the third world, you still need to protect yourself."

Cuba has another problem with the trade embargoes imposed upon it, and the article highlights how difficult it can be for supplies to be shipped and for any of the products to reach America, the company seeking to license (or otherwise) bring that product in must convince the US Office of Foreign Assets Control of a "compelling national interest."  CancerVax Corporation, a California bioscience company, was able to license in some technology to test a vaccine that seems to stimulate the immune system against lung cancer cells, but only after two years of lobbying. In looking at the press release above, this caught my eye:

Prior to the commercialization of any of the product candidates, all of the milestone and other payments owed to CIMAB under the license agreements will be made in U.S.-origin food, medicines and/or medical supplies for the public health purposes of the Cuban people.

That's a payment clause you don't often see in development agreements.

It will be interesting to watch and see if CancerVax is the first of a new round of companies that will be able to bring new vaccines and treatments to the US, or if it's an anomaly as the US continues to fight against Castro and the Communist regime there. And could the growth of the bioscience industry in Cuba bring about some changes in their philosophy of government, and introduce touches of capitalism a la China? Cuba may end up standing more staunchly by their "no-patent" thinking, but with so many countries now revamping their IP structure (such as India) in order to encourage the bioscience economy, it's possible that in the next decade or so it may open up a bit.

Comments

[carol nottenburg]

There are quite a few U.S. patents in biotechnology assigned to research institutes in Cuba.